November 2, 2009

LEON COUNTY, Fla. -- Matt Aresco has three and a half million reasons to smile. He's on a one man crusade to save turtles in North Florida and now has federal stimulus money to make it happen.

"Turtles like to nest along the grassy shoulders of the road. They wander up to lay their eggs and they get hammered on the road," said Aresco.

And thanks to federal stimulus money, Matt will get his wish in the form of a 3.4 million dollar stipend to build his dream tunnel.

"I was driving on this, I found 90 dead turtles in one day along about a third of a mile stretch of highway," said Aresco.

But the attention isn't all positive, in fact, there's a shell of a problem with the tunnel. There's enough money to start it, but not enough money to finish the project. Some say, the turtle tunnel is everything that's wrong with the stimulus.

"I think if there’s not enough money to finish it, that we shouldn’t start the project," said concerned citizen Lisa Aaron, "That’s government … is going to be struggling enough … given … just trying to recover from what we’re in now."

In fact, Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn made a list of the 100 questionable spending projects and on that list is the Highway 27 Turtle Tunnel. Actually, the tunnel is just one of 520 road and bridge projects the state of Florida plans to build with stimulus money.

Tallahassee native Connor Richards agrees with Senator Coburn and wonders why he's funding a project to save turtles at the same time people around the country are losing everything.

"I drive that stretch of 27 every day for work and I’ve seen maybe one or two dead turtles in the last year. In our current economy I think it’s ridiculous to spend three and a half million dollars on a project like this."

Work is already underway on Highway 27. The hope is to build the tunnel as soon as possible. That means, jobs have been created and with unemployment at an all time high, on the surface, new jobs would be a good thing.

"There are very few projects like this in the country. We've received national attention for developing this project," said Leon County Commissioner Cliff Thaell.

Call it a shell game or just a bump in the road, but there's no lack of opinion on the turtle tunnel. Despite the naysayers, Aresco still stands by his project and that's to save Florida's turtles, one shell at a time.

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